Many people have memories of feeding the pigeons at Granville Island Market. This is a 2007 photo of Matthew Marshall, 6, who was delighted to get the full attention of the birds.Vancouver Sun
/ SUN 00019538A SUN

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When Granville Island officially opened 35 years ago, it was an extraordinary, unusual and innovative re-use of industrial buildings and public space.

It was conceived as an urban park in a most non-traditional way with a mix of food stalls, restaurants, theatres, artisan studios, a cement plant, working boatyard, water park and grassy amphitheatre.

And it opened at a critical time in Vancouver’s development when its population was declining as people chose the suburbs over the city.

The Island predated our obsession with coffee, locavores, the organic food movement, local farmers’ markets, craft beer, specialty wines and Apple as a brand, not a fruit.

McDonald’s introduced its Happy Meal the year the market opened. The compact disc, Sony Walkman and the first spreadsheet program also went on sale that year and experiments had only begun on Usenet, which morphed into the Internet.

Despite all the massive changes that have occurred around it, Granville Island remains a focal point for residents and a magnet for tourists.

But recently, it struck me on a trip to San Francisco, that Granville Island is looking a bit dated, too familiar after years of too few changes.

San Francisco’s Ferry Terminal is not unlike the market, but it is dedicated to local, organic, specialty food products and is the site of the three-days-a-week farmers’ market. Extensively renovated and reopened in 2003, it was one of many changes along Embarcadero after a freeway collapsed during the 1989 earthquake.

In 2016, Emily Carr University’s decamping to Great Northern Way could have a similar — although less traumatic — catalyzing effect on Granville Island.

What’s up for grabs are 200,000 square feet of space and two buildings. And what is done in that space could dramatically alter the Island’s character and its future.

To be fair, even 35 years on, Granville Island remains widely admired and copied. So what happens there matters to the people who live nearby, but it is also one of the region’s top tourist attractions.

CitySpace Consulting has been hired to come up with a preliminary plan only for the Emily Carr space, based on what would complement and enhance what already exists. It has held three meetings with people and organizations that work on the island and its report is expected within six weeks.

Architect Norm Hotson helped design Granville Island in the 1970s. Although no longer involved in the planning, he too believes Emily Carr’s departure provides an opportunity for a modernization of the entire site.

For the Emily Carr space, Hotson says another educational institution would be a good replacement. But he’s also interested in the possibility of “an incubator space” with low-priced rents for innovators, artists or high-tech start-ups.

Another idea being mooted about is creating something such as Paris’s Cité Internationale des Arts where artists are offered rental space to work and live, lecture halls, small theatres, galleries and restaurants.

Toronto’s not-for-profit Artscape provides similar opportunities, while the artists’ studio at Vancouver’s 1000 Parker Street provide an idea for how part of that might look.

But that wouldn’t solve one of the island’s long-standing problems, which is that it’s dead at night.

There have long been controversial proposals for cinemas, which have been turned down. And it’s unlikely that anyone would favour the kind of bar scene which, depending on your point of view, has enlivened or ruined Granville Street downtown.

But for any of this to happen, there needs to be money — a considerable amount of money — and there’s no indication that the Conservative government is willing to provide it.

In the ’70s, money flowed because of the passionate and persuasive Ron Basford, a Vancouver cabinet minister and MP for Vancouver Centre. But it’s been decades since Granville Island has had an advocate with that kind of clout in Ottawa.

So, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. — a federal agency whose major preoccupation is self-evident in its name — has managed along with an unchanged blueprint and made do with rent revenues to cover maintenance costs.

There have been no major cash infusions for renovations, let alone replacement of crumbling, unseen infrastructure such as water lines.

There is a local advisory board, but even decisions as small as approving a three-year lease for a market stall are made in Ottawa.

So, while writing about a 21st-century redesign is more exciting, thinking about governance may be the more important issue. Wresting control from CMHC and Ottawa may be the most crucial step in ensuring that this re-imagining is as innovative as the last one.

For a model, think about Vancouver International Airport Authority. Freed from direct government control and given the power to borrow money and make decisions locally, the airport has expanded and flourished.

Granville Island deserves the same autonomy and local control because it didn’t result from some grand design done from afar.

It was conceived by local people who were widely consulted about what the perfect place for a perfect day out might look like.

A happy, if unintended, consequence of their imaginings is that their island has become a tourist attraction.

They deserve a chance to preserve and enhance it.

And what seems certain is that they will ensure that Granville Island 2.0 isn’t cluttered with tourist shops, global chains or condos and that its next incarnation is even better than the first one.

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